New Nuclear Power: Expensive, Slow, and Inferior

Abstract

New commercial nuclear power is more expensive and far slower to bring on-line than wind or solar photovoltaic energy generation facilities. The society should dedicate its resources especially to the large-scale deployment of offshore wind.

Aaron Datesman is the primary author of this chapter.

The great wind-turbine on a Vermont mountain proved that men could build a practical machine which would synchronously generate electricity in large quantities by means of wind-power. It proved also that the cost of electricity so produced is close to that of the more economical conventional methods. And hence it proved that at some future time homes may be illuminated and factories may be powered by these new means. (Putnam, 1948)− Vannevar Bush, architect of the scientific establishment in the U.S.

In the fossil fuel era, the sun has been largely ignored. No nation includes the sun in its official energy budget, even though all the other energy sources would be reduced to comparative insignificance if it were. We think we heat our homes with fossil fuels, forgetting that without the sun those homes would be –240 degrees Centigrade ... No country uses as much energy as is contained in the sunlight that strikes just its buildings. (Hayes, 1983)– Denis Hayes, second director of the Solar Energy Research Institute.

The Initial Adoption of Nuclear Power

The topic of this chapter is the collision in the present day between competing technologies for the generation of electrical energy: nuclear, solar photovoltaic, and onshore and offshore wind energy. The conflict has not arisen suddenly. In fact, its most prominent expression probably took place in the 1970’s, when the United States embarked on the third major energy transition in its history.

While wind energy possesses a centuries-long heritage (for grinding grain, pumping water, and even generating electricity at homestead scale), its history as a technology suitable for utility-scale generation of electrical energy traces to a single installation, pictured in Fig. 8.1: the 1.25 MW Smith-Putnam wind turbine, constructed in the early 1940’s. Built by MIT engineer Palmer C. Putnam, heir to the Putnam publishing house, it was the largest wind turbine anywhere in the world until 1979. To design and build this pioneering facility, Putnam enlisted the help of scientific luminaries including the aeronautical engineer Dr. Theodore von Kármán of Caltech, and Dr. Vannevar Bush of MIT, the visionary of American scientific dominance in the second half of the twentieth century. Wind energy began to contribute to the US electrical grid at utility scale in 1981, with the construction of wind energy facilities in the Altamont Pass, near San Jose in California.

Fig. 8.1

(Left) The Smith-Putnam wind turbine built on Grandpa’s Knob in Castleton, VT, which commenced operation in October 1941. (Source: Putnam, 1948) (Right) Denis Hayes, organizer of the first Earth Day in 1970. (Source: AP)

There are many candidate milestones that could be chosen to indicate the advent of solar photovoltaic technology. In the author’s opinion, the best choice is the 1954 Bell Laboratories patent of the silicon solar cell.¹ The first utility-scale (meaning larger than 1 MW) solar photovoltaic plant was constructed by the Atlantic Richfield Oil Company in San Luis Obispo County, CA, in 1983.

For nuclear power technology, one might choose as an appropriate milestone the date on which the Submarine Thermal Reactor (STR) reached criticality, in March 1953. The STR was the prototype for the powerplant of the Nautilus submarine, the first vessel to complete a submerged transit of the North Pole. A more relevant choice might instead be the first commercial generation of electrical power using nuclear technology, which commenced at the Shippingport Atomic Power Station near Pittsburgh, PA, in December 1957. The power output of this facility, which operated into the 1980’s, was 60 MW.

The commercial buildout of large nuclear power stations in the United States was underway by the mid-1960’s. Historians employed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission describe the situation existing at that time as a “bandwagon market”:

The bandwagon market for nuclear power reached its peak during 1966 and 1967, exceeding, in the words of one General Electric official, “even the most optimistic estimates...” [In 1967], nuclear vendors sold 31 units that represented 49 percent of the capacity ordered. (Walker & Wellock, 2010).

The economics underpinning the frenzy, however, were adverse. The bandwagon market lost hundreds of millions of dollars for Westinghouse and General Electric, the two firms competing at that time to offer “turnkey” nuclear power stations of unprecedented scale to skeptical utilities. The effort to crack open a market that did not previously exist, however, was successful: by 1980, there were 71 operating nuclear power stations in the U.S. Increasing concern regarding the particulate air pollution released by coal-fired power plants had provided a strong motivation for utility company executives to consider switching to nuclear power technology.

The onset of commercial nuclear power in the U.S. about coincided with two other events, in some senses distinct, but also all interrelated: the 1973 crisis created by the OPEC oil embargo, as well as the advent of the modern environmental movement. The first Earth Day celebration, on April 22, 1970, was a watershed moment for the latter: an estimated 20 million Americans took part. While Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin is recognized as the founder of Earth Day, the individual most responsible for making the senator’s vision a reality was a young man from a working-class background named Denis Hayes, whose photo appears in Fig. 8.1. A New York Times interview from 2020 describes the path that brought Hayes to his fateful meeting with Senator Nelson in Washington, DC, in 1969:

[Hayes] traveled across Asia and much of Africa, Eastern Europe and the Middle East, working when he needed money for the next leg and living on peanut butter and oatmeal, and the occasional cup of coffee loaded with all of the sugar and cream on the table ... On a meditative night in the desert, in a state of mind heightened by his “terrible diet” and the desert chill, “It just came together in my mind that we’re animals and we didn’t abide by the principles that govern the natural world,” he said.

He woke up the next morning with a purpose. “I wanted to devote my life to advancing principles of ecology as they apply to human beings and to human communities, to human processes.” (Schwartz, 2020)

Environmentalist sentiment and activism racked up a remarkable string of successes during the Nixon administration in the early 1970’s, including the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency. Especially because contemporary events aligned with environmental concerns, the promotion of alternative energy technologies was a component of the ecological fervor of the era. For instance, the Solar Energy Research Institute (SERI) was established by legislation in 1974 (during the Ford administration). SERI opened its doors in Golden, CO, in 1977. The second director of SERI, appointed by President Carter in 1979, was Denis Hayes. Today SERI is known as the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, NREL. Its 2020 budget was $545 million.

In the 1970’s, wind and solar energy technologies were not ready for large-scale deployment. Due to $16 billion spent by the Federal government between 1951 and 1971 to develop light water reactor technology, however, at that time nuclear power did exist as a viable option. The lesson that nuclear power, while viable, was not economical, has perhaps been forgotten. When delivery of oil from the North Slope of Alaska (the Trans-Alaska Pipeline opened in 1977) commenced, the energy crises of the 1970s began to abate, and the imperative for nuclear power in the U.S. collapsed.

The thesis of this chapter is that, while history may not repeat itself exactly, it does often rhyme. There are lessons from the events of four or five decades ago that resonate today. Nuclear power competes, on a spectrum of distinct criteria, with other sources of energy. Therefore, with the appropriate context in mind, this chapter compares the performance of competing technologies − new nuclear power, solar photovoltaic, onshore wind, and offshore wind − on basic criteria including cost and time to deployment, in the present day. What is the best path forward?

The Domestic Nuclear Renaissance

The author was employed in a research laboratory supporting the Nuclear Navy in 2005, when there was much excitement about a “Nuclear Renaissance” that appeared to be right around the corner. At that time, the Bush administration – firmly rooted as its key figures were in the fossil energy sector – nevertheless promoted nuclear power as a zero-carbon means of energy production, compatible with the demands of environmentalists to address climate concerns. The excitement was stimulated by significant events: for instance, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission awarded the final design certification to the new Westinghouse AP1000 pressurized water reactor (PWR) in December 2005.

Nearly 18 years later, it’s apparent that the promised renaissance failed to materialize – at least, not in the United States. Only one nuclear power plant has entered operation in the U.S. since then, Watts Bar Unit 2 in Tennessee. The plant went on-line in June 2016. Prior to that date, the newest nuclear power station in the U.S. was Watts Bar Unit 1, which went on-line in May 1996. (Construction began at Watts Bar Unit 2 in 1973.) In total, the material outcome of the domestic nuclear renaissance consists of two construction sites in the southeastern U.S., where the construction of four AP1000 PWRs began in the 2009 timeframe. V.C. Summer Units 2 and 3 in South Carolina were cancelled in July 2017, after an expenditure of nearly $11 billion. Several executives responsible for the project were prosecuted for fraud; at least one served a sentence in the federal penitentiary.

In Georgia, construction on Plant Vogtle Units 3 and 4 remained ongoing fourteen years after construction began. The U.S. government has provided $12 billion in loan guarantees supporting the effort. As much as $35 billion has been spent on the construction of these facilities through mid-2023. Initial criticality was achieved in Unit 3 in March 2023, with grid connection occurring the following month. It had been expected that the reactors would enter service in 2016, at a cost of $14 billion – less than half of what was eventually spent. Plagued by delays and massive cost overruns, Plant Vogtle has at least demonstrated that it is possible to build 2000 Megawatts of electrical generation in the United States using Generation IV nuclear power plant technology. No further claim regarding the potential of next-generation nuclear technology in the U.S. has been validated by experience.

The nameplate capacity, in Megawatts (MW), measures the maximum power an energy generation facility produces at one instant in time under ideal conditions. The capacity factor describes how much energy the facility delivers in operation over an extended duration. Most nuclear power stations have a capacity around 1000 MW, equal to 1 GW (Gigawatt). Although we call the utility the “power company”, the charge per kW-hr on a utility bill reflects the price of energy rather than power. An average U.S. household consumes about 10,600 kW-h (11 MW-h) of energy annually.

The Vanishing Nuclear Renaissance in Historical Context

Because offshore wind (which has not been demonstrated at a large scale domestically) will be offered as a further alternative, it is legitimate to ask whether the Plant Vogtle costs result from so-called “first of a kind” (FOAK) issues, or other concerns that have been addressed and should not reoccur. A report from MIT assesses the construction “should cost” of the next AP1000 reactor to be significantly lower than the Plant Vogtle expenditure, declining still further for the tenth unit.

The prediction of lower capital costs with increasing deployment of nuclear power is not, however, supported by historical experience. According to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), for 75 nuclear power plants that began construction in the U.S. from 1966 until 1977, the construction costs increased from $0.623 million/MW (in 1982 dollars) in 1966–1967 to $2.132 million/MW in 1976–1977. The latter value is equivalent to $6.7 million/MW in 2023 dollars. Because there are no plans to build more AP1000 reactors, there is no prospect of attempting to validate the prediction of a reduction in the “n-th of a kind” (NOAK) capital cost against the wisdom provided by previous experience of costs that increase over time.

The conclusion that “the market has spoken” against nuclear power is to some extent surprising within the culture, because there simultaneously exists a well-funded, vocal, significant, and often rather successful public relations campaign in favor of the technology.² Why does “The Market” – supposedly clear-eyed, dispassionate, and not given to the unfounded concerns regarding safety voiced by mothers and activists – not respond positively to the technophilic impulse? It is the author’s view that the situation arose in part because the 1979 accident at the Three Mile Island (TMI) nuclear power station in Pennsylvania has been misinterpreted to the benefit of the industry.

The dominant view is that TMI killed the domestic nuclear power industry, but this is not in fact correct. Spiraling costs halted the buildout of domestic nuclear power at the same moment that new supplies of oil from Alaska and the North Sea resolved the oil crises of the 1970’s. TMI simply gave the industry cover for its economic failure. A February 1985 article in Forbes magazine – as reliable an indicator of what the market may believe as it is possible to find – makes the case:

The failure of the U.S. nuclear power program ranks as the largest managerial disaster in business history, a disaster on a monumental scale. The utility industry has already invested $125 billion in nuclear power … only the blind, or the biased, can now think that most of the money has been well spent. (Cook, 1985).

While 67 planned nuclear power facilities were canceled from 1979 through 1988, many nuclear power plants that had begun the licensing process in the 1970’s continued to come online through the early 1990’s. While the NRC did tighten regulation and oversight in the wake of TMI, it continued to support additional capacity coming on-line. The cancelations were therefore principally motivated by adverse economics. The distinction is important and relevant, even today, because the conditions that made nuclear power a managerial disaster in the 1970’s have not abated. The technology remains dangerous, and therefore expensive. The TMI accident camouflaged a lesson about the economics of nuclear power that, thanks to the nuclear renaissance, it has been necessary to re-learn at great expense in South Carolina and Georgia.

Construction Cost and Duration

It is desirable first to compare the competing technologies on the basis of construction cost and duration. The comparison requires that one examine facilities of similar scale, which is a complicating factor because their large power output in some ways is a positive aspect of nuclear power stations. The largest photovoltaic power plant in the U.S. as of 2023 is the Solar Star (formerly, Antelope Valley) facility, which occupies 3200 acres on the edge of the Mojave Desert near Rosamond, CA. Its power output is 579 MW, with a capacity factor of 32.8%. Its construction, which began in the first quarter of 2013, required less than 2.5 years. The cost to build the Solar Star PV facility is not perfectly transparent, due to ownership changes and the method of financing, but an estimate of $2.7 billion is reasonable.

The largest onshore wind power facility is the Alta Wind Energy Center (AWEC), located in the foothills of the Tehachapi Mountains in California, not far from the Solar Star PV facility. The AWEC facility consists of 600 turbines with a combined capacity of 1548 MW. AWEC operates with a capacity factor of 23.5%. It was constructed in 11 stages, from 2010–2014. The individual stages, each approximately 100 MW in size, required less than 1 year to build. The overall cost of construction was in the range of $2.9 billion.

As of 2023, in the United States there exist only two operating offshore wind farms, both of which are small (12 MW and 30 MW). Because the U.S. has lagged the rest of the world in offshore wind power for many years, a domestic as-built comparison between offshore wind and the other technologies should not be made. Nevertheless, the technology should not be excluded from consideration. Consider therefore the Hornsea offshore wind farm, the world’s largest, seventy-five miles off the coast of the United Kingdom in the North Sea. Two of four proposed stages have been built and are operational. Hornsea 1, with a capacity of 1200 MW, was built between 2016 and 2020 at a cost of approximately $5 billion. Its capacity factor stands at about 47%.

The comparison between nuclear, solar photovoltaic, and onshore and offshore wind energy generation is summarized in Table 8.1, which at a high level provides a reasonably direct comparison between the competing technologies at similar (though not identical) scale as they have been built out in the real world. The annual generation in MW_avg is given by the nameplate capacity multiplied by the capacity factor, which accounts for such considerations as the intermittency of renewable resources, curtailment, and downtime for repair and maintenance. The capacity factor for Plant Vogtle is assumed to be 90%, nearly matching that of the U.S. nuclear industry overall. (It may, one should note, require many years of operating experience to reach this level of reliability.)

Table 8.1 Comparison of normalized construction costs (final column) between nuclear and renewable technologies

The normalized costs in Table 8.1 represent the overall cost of construction divided by the energy generated. According to this simple comparison, one concludes that Plant Vogtle is somewhat more expensive than utility-scale photovoltaic technology was 8 years ago, twice as expensive as onshore wind about a decade ago, and around 75% more expensive than offshore wind installed in the North Sea a few years ago.

The comparison is incomplete because it fails to account for ongoing and future costs that include fuel, operations and maintenance (O&M), decommissioning, and safe storage of spent nuclear fuel. However, since renewables have no fuel cost (and leave no lethally dangerous waste behind) the omission further privileges renewables over nuclear, only reinforcing the basic conclusion. In short, based upon what has been demonstrated in the real world it appears that nuclear is more expensive than renewable energy technologies, and as much as a decade slower to bring on-line.

Levelized Cost of Energy

Because it is not based solely upon the installation expense, the parameter known as the Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE) provides a more complete and useful assessment of competing technologies. The LCOE addresses a bottom-line question. Since the consumer of electrical energy is mostly concerned about the cost per kW-hr appearing on a monthly invoice from the utility company, the LCOE is defined as the lifetime cost of operating a power plant divided by the energy it produces. Calculation of the LCOE yields an expense per MW-hr of energy consumed.

A 2022 analysis by researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) found an LCOE for utility-scale PV of $33 per MW-hr, nearly the same as the $34 per MW-hr for onshore wind energy found by NREL researchers in 2021. The same report found LCOE values of $78 and $133 per MW-hr for fixed-bottom and floating offshore wind, respectively. Meanwhile, a 2018 report from the Energy Information Administration (EIA) found the LCOE for new nuclear power coming on-line in 2021 to be $90 per MW-hr. The information is summarized in Table 8.2.

Table 8.2 Comparison of Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE) between new nuclear power, and renewable technologies

The LCOE values summarized in Table 8.2 are mostly consistent with the normalized costs of construction given in Table 8.1, perhaps except for the LCOE of offshore wind. Construction is, of course, a significant component of overall lifecycle cost. The discrepancy between construction costs vs. LCOE for onshore and offshore wind is most likely attributable to higher O&M costs for offshore facilities.

The acronyms might be obscure to the reader, but it is worthwhile to point out that the organizations represented in Table 8.2 (EIA, LBNL, and NREL) are all components of the U.S. Department of Energy.³ Therefore, the most important takeaway from the information presented in Table 8.2 ought to be that the principal advocate for the nuclear renaissance (DOE) itself acknowledges that energy generated by new nuclear power would be nearly three times more expensive than energy generated by renewable alternatives.

The Immediate Opportunity Cost of Plant Vogtle

According to statistics compiled by Bloomberg, total domestic spending on renewable energy technologies (principally onshore wind and photovoltaic, but also including spending on electric vehicles and batteries) increased from $10 billion in 2004 to $47 billion in 2007, was reasonably consistent within the range from $45 – $65 billion from 2010–2019, and increased again in 2020. In 2021, domestic spending on renewable energy technologies exceeded $100 billion annually. The cost of Plant Vogtle can be roughly, but fairly, evaluated within the context of this information. Though spread out over 14 years, the construction of the nuclear power facility in Georgia consumed 6–9 months of total domestic investment in the renewables sector. This allocation of resources, supported by substantial loan guarantees from the U.S. government, purchased nothing but delay. Plant Vogtle Unit 3 did not deliver a single kW-hr of energy to the grid until 2023.

What if the money spent to construct Plant Vogtle Units 3 and 4 had instead been invested in renewable energy facilities? This is a reasonable means by which to assess the opportunity cost associated with Plant Vogtle. The annualized cost of construction of the two AP 1000 reactors at the site lies in the range of $2.5 billion, an amount coincidentally about equal to the total cost of the individual photovoltaic and wind energy facilities listed in Table 8.1.

If the money spent to build Plant Vogtle had been, instead, allocated toward building similar photovoltaic and wind energy facilities beginning in 2014 or 2015, by 2023 it would have been possible to deploy six completed facilities like either Solar Star or AWEC. In the first case the deployed average generation would have been 1140 MW_avg at a cost of $16 billion; in the second, 2184 MW_avg at a cost of $17 billion.⁴ The renewable energy facilities, unlike Plant Vogtle, would have begun to push power on to the electrical grid as early as 2015, with more coming on-line every subsequent year. Plant Vogtle Units 3 and 4 together cost $35 billion, pushed no energy on to the grid until 2023 (at which point Unit 4 had still not come on-line), and will (optimistically) provide average generation of 2234 MW_avg.

On the basis of rapid deployment and cost − both installation cost, and LCOE − it is clear that utility-scale photovoltaic and onshore wind today each remarkably outperform new nuclear installations at current levels of penetration. It is very difficult to make predictions, however, especially about the future. To consider one example, the comparison between renewables and new nuclear power is not necessarily stationary as additional resources come on-line. The best sites for renewable energy generation have naturally been built out first, so that capacity factors of new facilities will decrease (and LCOE rise) as penetration increases. How will the situation appear once the grid has been built out to 50% powered by wind and solar energy? The question requires thoughtful analysis beyond the scope of this discussion.

The Current Situation

A facility costing billions of dollars to construct cannot simply be copied. Among other considerations, siting is an important issue for deployment. Although copies cannot be made, facilities like AWEC and Solar Star are being built, and at an astonishing rate. Figure 8.2 illustrates capacity additions for wind and solar energy installations in the U.S. on an annual basis from 2010–2021.

Fig. 8.2

Historical additions to generating capacity by renewable sources. The data are from Bloomberg. (Nathalie, 2023)

Wind energy installations contributed new nameplate capacity in the range from 7–9 GW every year from 2015–2019, while solar energy nameplate capacity grew by more than 10 GW every year from 2016–2020. New wind capacity in 2021 was 13 GW, while in 2021 new solar photovoltaic capacity was 23.6 GW. If the average capacity factor of these photovoltaic installations is 20%, then in just one recent year solar energy added electrical energy generation about equivalent to five AP1000 nuclear reactors to the grid.

In 2023, EIA expects the grid to add capacity equal to 29.1 GW from utility-scale solar photovoltaic, 9.4 GW from battery storage, 7.5 GW from natural gas, 6 GW from wind power (including 130 MW of offshore wind), and 2.2 GW from nuclear power (as the Plant Vogtle reactors come on-line). Overall, utility-scale solar photovoltaic represents more than half (54%) of forecasted additional capacity. The situation for renewables today, in short, echoes the favorable situation that existed for nuclear power in 1967, when nuclear technology accounted for 49% of new capacity additions.

Today, however, no additional capacity from nuclear power is likely to be constructed after the completion of Plant Vogtle Units 3 and 4. The market has given a very clear signal that renewable technologies are a good and promising investment, while nuclear power is disfavored.

The Future is Offshore

It is appropriate to disclose that the author was employed as a contractor supporting the Offshore Wind Initiative in the wind energy program within DOE for about a year, circa 2012.

While in 2023 there were only two small offshore wind farms operating domestically, the U.S. possesses a tremendous potential for developing offshore wind. The most recent update available from NREL finds an offshore resource of 1476 GW that could be accessed using fixed-bottom turbines (possible only in relatively shallow water), and 2773 GW using floating turbines. By way of comparison, according to EIA the total utility-scale capacity for the generation of electrical energy in the United States at the end of 2022 was 1160 GW.⁵ That is, the sum of all of the electrical power consumed within the United States is less than the estimated resource from offshore wind.

Worldwide (mostly in the United Kingdom, China, and Germany), the capacity of installed offshore wind power exceeded 35 GW in 2020. In the U.S., it seems conceivable that a remarkable transformation could be on the horizon. As of August 2022, there was a construction pipeline for offshore wind projects of 40 GW; twenty-four power purchase agreements for offshore wind power, totaling 17.6 GW, were already in effect.

Deployment may accelerate from 2023–2030, in response to the goal of the Biden administration to install 30 GW of offshore wind power by 2030. Whether this goal is met, of course, remains to be demonstrated. The growing success of the onshore wind industry in the U.S., the vast scale of the resource, and the experience that exists with offshore wind in Europe and China, taken together all suggest that the main barriers are only political and social.

The path forward toward 80% and then 100% renewable energy will therefore significantly include offshore wind, which is already clear due to the scale of existing power purchase agreements for wind energy facilities that have yet to be built. However, the technology lacks a strong domestic track record, and is not obviously superior to new nuclear power on levelized cost of energy. Why would it make sense to pursue one approach over the other? That is: while financially it does not make sense to build new nuclear power plants today, we might wish that we had when renewable penetration has reached 50%.

In the author’s opinion, this is unlikely to be the case. Nuclear power plants are expensive because the technology is inherently dangerous, few are built, and the necessary components must be engineered to an astounding level of quality. History demonstrates that predicted cost savings do not materialize. Photovoltaic panels, on the other hand, have obeyed the rule of mass production. The cost of a solar panel declined by a factor of eight in about a decade: from $2.15 per Watt in 2010, to $0.27 per Watt in 2021. While wind energy facilities will not show the same dramatic cost declines exhibited by photovoltaic components, the rules of mass production will also apply. The LCOE of offshore wind will likely decline, making new nuclear power facilities economically uncompetitive with this vast, and untapped, resource.

The U.S. Department of Energy forecasts that, by 2035, LCOE will decline to $53 per MW-hr for fixed-bottom, and $64 per MW-hr for floating, offshore wind energy. The reductions will occur due to efficiencies which arise as the global deployment of offshore wind energy increases by a factor of nine, over a span of only a dozen years. The forecasted horizon to realize these cost savings is shorter than the construction duration for Plant Vogtle after breaking ground in 2009. New nuclear power facilities, in short, are the wrong response to climate change: too slow, too expensive, and a misallocation of financial resources away from superior alternatives.

The Long-Term Opportunity Cost

The discussion in this chapter opened with the historical view, beginning with the construction of a utility-scale wind energy facility on a mountaintop in Vermont in the early 1940’s. Nuclear power, wind energy, and solar photovoltaic technologies all already existed in nascent form in the years circa 1940–1955, decades before “renewable energy” or “sustainability” appeared in discourse. The development of nuclear power to create a commercial technology from modest beginnings benefited both from institutional inertia⁶ due to the massive wartime effort to produce the atomic bomb, as well as national security concerns at the outset of the Cold War. Research and development (R&D) of the competing renewable technologies, on the other hand, was not meaningfully supported until the establishment of the Department of Energy in 1978. The funding landscape in the years from 1948–2018 is summarized in Fig. 8.3.

Fig. 8.3

Federal government support for energy technology research from 1948–2018, in 2016 dollars. Spending in the Renewables category prior to the establishment of the Department of Energy in 1978 was rather small, less than $2 billion. This information was compiled by the Congressional Research Service. (Clark, 2018)

It is clear from Fig. 8.3 that funding for nuclear and fossil energy has greatly exceeded funding for renewables (and energy efficiency) over a time scale of decades. In recent years, the data indicate that there has been approximate parity. From fiscal year FY09 − FY18, the Congressional Research Service reports expenditures of $9.4 billion for Renewables, $8.2 billion for Energy Efficiency, $10 billion for Fossil Energy, and $13.7 billion for Nuclear Energy. The Federal R&D expenditure for nuclear energy over a seventy-year horizon has been $110 billion.

The Federal appropriation for SERI in 1980 was $130 million, estimated to exceed the combined amounts spent on renewables research and development by every other country in the world at that time. President Carter lost the election of 1980, however, and in 1981 the Reagan administration reduced funding for the new facility to only $30 million. About half of the staff were released. Denis Hayes resigned his position as director of SERI in protest. Hayes reflected on the situation in an interview conducted in 2012, a point in time when solar photovoltaic capacity was being added at only about one-tenth of the current rate:

As a planet, we’re now moving the way we would have if we’d gotten Carter re-elected. The tragedy is that the United States dropped the torch. The flame was kept alive by Japan and then Germany with their feed-in tariffs. A dozen other countries now have worked to achieve the volume we needed to drive us down the cost curves. The basic technology of what we do now was all within our grasp in the Carter years. (Masia, 2012)

The $110 billion in Federal R&D funding for nuclear energy, like the money spent to construct two AP1000 reactors at Plant Vogtle, should also be considered a statement of opportunity cost. Recognizing that the competitive landscape between new nuclear power and renewables strongly favors renewables today, where might we be if the decades of support lavished upon a “managerial disaster” had instead been allocated to patient, long-term development of wind energy and solar photovoltaics? The society cannot go back in time, of course, but wiser decisions can (and must) be made moving forward. The quickest way to reduce the quantity of carbon released into the atmosphere is to deploy wind and solar photovoltaic energy generation facilities at vast scale and as quickly as possible. Nuclear energy is an impediment to this urgent goal.

Summary Points

• 1. New nuclear power is more expensive than renewable alternatives, and far slower to build and bring on-line. Renewable technologies (onshore and offshore wind, and solar photovoltaic) are the best means to reduce the amount of carbon being released to the atmosphere as quickly as possible.

• 2. Nuclear power has never been economical in a domestic context. On a generational basis, its promoters have been able to advance deployment of the technology in response to societal crises.

• 3. The Federal government has supported research and development of nuclear power technology on a vast scale over decades. At the present time, R&D for renewables remains less than that supporting nuclear power technology.